Playing With a Chip on the Shoulder is ‘Who We Are’
Feb 05, 2026 | Baseball, Sports Extra
By: D. Scott Fritchen
It's been 248 days since Pete Hughes pulled off his Kansas State uniform for the last time after a 2025 baseball season that ended with a second consecutive appearance in an NCAA Regional. Hughes now sits on a folding chair in the team meeting room at Tointon Family Stadium for the team's media day event, flanked by four players, and for the next 30 minutes discusses the Wildcats — and how far they could go in 2026.
"We've proven we can beat anybody in the country in a single game, and we've proven that we can beat anybody in the country in a two-out-of-three series," Hughes says. "I tell our guys every week they're an Omaha team, but we can't get into the way of ourselves, and must do the little things, and love everything about being a K-State baseball player.
"We can't get in our own way, because we're talented enough, deep enough and hungry enough to be an Omaha team."
Hughes, who enters his eighth season at K-State, is the winningest active Big 12 Conference head baseball coach with 820 career victories, which ranks 13th among active Power 4 head coaches, and he is the only active NCAA Division I coach to have served as head coach at four Power 4 programs — with stops at Boston College (1999-2006), Virginia Tech (2007-2013) and Oklahoma (2014-2017). He has posted 25 winning seasons in 28 years as a head coach, including all seven seasons at K-State, taking the Wildcats to the 2024 NCAA Super Regional and 2025 NCAA Regional.
Large matte silver lettering posted along an overhang in his office reveals that the 57-year-old native of Brockton, Massachusetts, isn't letting down anytime soon.
"THE OMAHA STANDARD," the silver letters beam.
K-State junior right-hander James Guyette lets it be known that the Wildcats mean business.
"Looking back on the two years we've gone to regionals, I know what it takes to get to the postseason, and this team has what it takes," Guyette says. "We have the talent, depth and a very talented hitting lineup. We have what it takes. It's just a matter of doing it when it matters."
After finishing with a 35-26 record, including a 15-15 mark in the Big 12, and reaching the 2024 NCAA Super Regional, K-State faced challenges last season. Virtually the entire starting lineup was gone, including three MLB Draftees that included the best closer in college baseball. And yet, Hughes and his coaching staff pieced together a hard-nosed squad that fought, and fought hard, and the Wildcats were battle tested by playing one of the toughest schedules in America, and they finished 32-24 overall, including 17-13 in the Big 12, posting their most conference victories in history, and got back into the NCAA Regionals for a second straight season.
And yet, silence emits from across the college baseball nation heading into the 2026 season.
Could it be the sound of disrespect?
"Do we have a chip on our shoulder? Absolutely," Hughes says. "That's who we are. We're Kansas State baseball. We're a bubble team before the season starts and somehow, they're going to put us on that bubble no matter our body of work. That's just who we are right now. It motivates us.
"Until you start stacking years and years of knocking on the door at Omaha, then you'll get the respect of a program that has great tradition. We're fighting a lot of these things right now, but we do every year and we can only control what we can control and that's being really good on Friday against Iowa, playing great on the road, and continuing to establish a home-field presence, and to be consistent from February until the beginning of June, and then we won't be considered that seventh-place team that has no prospects. Believe me, we have no problem with that right now because we know who we are."
Coming off its third straight 30-win season, K-State returns 21 players, including 17 letterwinners, from last season. The list of key returners begins with sophomore infielder/outfielder AJ Evasco, who earned D1Baseball Freshman All-America honors after turning in a record-breaking debut season by setting K-State freshman records with 11 home runs and 52 RBI. Senior infielder Shintaro Inoue, junior infielder Dee Kennedy, senior catcher Bear Madliak, senior outfielder Kyan Lodice and sophomore pitcher/outfielder Donte Lewis figure heavily into the mix as well.
"Year one was a lot," Lewis says. "I just learned to really hone in on focusing on the skills that'll help me on both sides. It's going to be a heavy load this year but I'm excited."
The Wildcats also brought in 12 transfers. That includes senior outfielder Robby Bolin (Nebraska), redshirt senior right-hander Cohen Feser (TCU), senior right-hander Matt Flores (UC Riverside), senior left-hander Robert Fortenberry (Mississippi State), senior infielder Grant Gallagher (Tennessee State), junior infielder/right-hander Austin Haley (Murray State), graduate catcher Shea McGahan (Southeast Missouri) and redshirt senior infielder Carlos Vasquez (Western Kentucky).
"You have to build into the culture that's been built," says Madliak, who transferred from Jacksonville State last season. "I knew this was a great place. You might think why a boy from Georgia would come to K-State, but I've been to two different schools and have had three different coaches, and this is by far the best place I've been to. You buy in and listen to your coaches, and they're going to have your back. I love these guys. Just buy into the culture."
Perhaps no current K-State player understands the baseball culture better than Lodice, a native of Omaha, Nebraska, who embarks upon his fifth year with the program.
"Coming in here my freshman year, Kansas State was never a baseball school," Lodice says. "We've flipped this program around entirely. It's a daily thing we talk about, having a chip on the shoulder, whether it's in practice or on the field, and we all share the same belief. Having a chip on our shoulder pushes us farther and farther.
"Talent wise, we have it, and we have the depth, and without those things, having a chip on our shoulder would mean nothing to us. It's going to help us succeed and get to higher places."
Oftentimes last year, K-State sent shots higher and higher over the scoreboard. K-State hit a school-record 97 home runs in 2025.
Could the Wildcats' power hitting return in 2026?
"I think so," Hughes says. "The key is to get better every year. We're a lot deeper than we were offensively last year. I'm used to playing nine or 10 guys, and that number has jumped to 12 or 13 guys in the mix, which gives you really good matchups. That power component will be there again. We'll see a lot of pitches, control the strike zone, get on base, put pressure on people, and that power component is right there."
The pitching staff is one of the deepest under Hughes, who is undecided exactly who will take the mound the first week of the season.
The list of potential options starts with Guyette, who was second on the team with a 4.70 ERA in 51.2 innings pitched and had 51 strikeouts while ranking 10th in the Big 12 in saves en route to earning All-Big 12 Honorable Mention accolades. Senior left-hander Lincoln Sheffield had a team-leading 15 starts and was second on the team with 70 strikeouts last season. Feser held opponents scoreless in 10 of 18 appearances last season at TCU. Flores began his career at Hawaii and spent the last two seasons at UC Riverside where he had a 3.66 ERA (16 ER, 39.1 IP) last season. Redshirt junior right-hander Tanner Duke, who transferred from Baylor after the 2024 campaign, posted 35 strikeouts in 38 innings pitched while issuing just 15 walks last season. Redshirt junior sidewinder lefty Cole Wisenbaker is back after missing last season due to injury but made 22 relief appearances in 2024. Redshirt senior right-hander Tazwell Butler recorded 24 strikeouts in 26 2/3 innings pitched with just nine walks last season. Eich comes to K-State from Division II Barry University, where he boasted a 4.78 ERA in 15 weekend starts while surrendering 40 earned runs over 75.1 innings.
"We have a super-competitive pitching staff right now with a lot of returning veteran guys who've been in the heat of the battle," Hughes said. "It hasn't really sorted itself out, but it will. It could vary from weekend to weekend with matchups and who we're playing and facilities we're playing in. We have the luxury of seven or eight guys who are pretty talented and battle tested who could make up our rotation at some point.
"Right out of the gate, at Louisiana, somebody important on our pitching staff is going to be pitching those games, and it's going to be on a Tuesday and Wednesday. Are we going to have a clear-cut Friday, Saturday, Sunday rotation like last year? Today, I'd say it's going to vary, and that speaks volumes to the depth of our pitching staff."
Redshirt senior right-hander Carson Liggett, who transferred from Louisville, returns after missing last season at K-State due to Tommy John surgery and could be a starter or perhaps a closer — but Hughes and pitching coach Rudy Darrow are being careful.
"Carson Liggett is as advanced in his rehab post-Tommy John as any pitcher I've ever coached," Hughes says. "At seven months, he was full go. It's amazing. I've never seen a kid at seven months with a stronger arm and touch and feel for four pitches. That's where Carson was at seven months. He's at nine months right now. We're going to be careful with him. Even though he's done great things in his rehab, we'll still error on the safe side with Carson, but he'll certainly pitch weekend one for us at some point."
The journey through the 2026 campaign fires up when K-State faces Iowa on Opening Day on February 13 at the MLB Desert Invitational in Scottsdale, Arizona. The Wildcats' four-day event will also feature games against UConn, Penn State and Air Force. The Wildcats' 55-game schedule includes nine opponents that advanced to the 2025 NCAA Regional, while Auburn and West Virginia went to the Super Regional, and Arizona went to the College World Series. In total, K-State will face nine teams — 22 games — that finished with an RPI of 50 or lower in 2025, while two were ranked in the final D1Baseball Top 25 poll. K-State will play midweek non-conference games at Baylor (March 17) and at BYU (March 31) to continue building its RPI as well.
K-State played one of the nation's toughest schedules last season in order to appease the RPI metric and satisfy members of the NCAA Tournament selection committee.
This season? K-State plays its first nine games on the road. It starts in the MLB Desert Invitational, then against Auburn, Nebraska and Michigan in the Amegy Bank College Baseball Series, and finally back-to-back games at Louisiana. K-State's home opener against Columbia is on February 27 at Tointon Family Stadium.
"I'm constantly trying to build our RPI, and you do that through non-conference opportunities," Hughes says. "In this part of the country, it's well documented we don't have great non-conference RPI opportunities in Kansas, so you have to be creative with the schedule. In the past, we've gotten on a plane and gone to Tennessee or Clemson midweek to ramp up our RPI to improve our resume so we can get on the bubble or off the bubble, however you approach it. At the end of the day, the RPI is a metric that's way too important in the process, but until that changes, I'll continue to schedule the way we're doing. The way we do that is we jack up our non-conference RPI.
"We play a tough schedule. It's always a difficult situation because you want more home games, but at the end of the day, we're hired to get into the national tournament so we can get hot and go to Omaha. Getting away from home a little bit with the RPI is the most efficient way for us to put ourselves into position to play in the national tournament at the end of the year. That's what motivates that scheduling."
K-State will look to begin its winning ways on Opening Day against Iowa next Friday in Goodyear Ballpark in Goodyear, Arizona. The 2026 NCAA Division I Baseball Tournament Selection Show to announce the 64-team regional field and host sites is scheduled for May 25.
In between will be a whole lot of intrigue — again.
"Something different this year than any other year is the amount of experience and older players we have on this team," Lodice says. "That's going to play an even bigger role this year with the amount of experience we have coming from other schools and the older guys who've played a lot of baseball. That's going to hone in on even more June baseball for us.
"Going to a Super Regional and a Regional, this team is well capable — plus Omaha."
It's been 248 days since Pete Hughes pulled off his Kansas State uniform for the last time after a 2025 baseball season that ended with a second consecutive appearance in an NCAA Regional. Hughes now sits on a folding chair in the team meeting room at Tointon Family Stadium for the team's media day event, flanked by four players, and for the next 30 minutes discusses the Wildcats — and how far they could go in 2026.
"We've proven we can beat anybody in the country in a single game, and we've proven that we can beat anybody in the country in a two-out-of-three series," Hughes says. "I tell our guys every week they're an Omaha team, but we can't get into the way of ourselves, and must do the little things, and love everything about being a K-State baseball player.
"We can't get in our own way, because we're talented enough, deep enough and hungry enough to be an Omaha team."
Hughes, who enters his eighth season at K-State, is the winningest active Big 12 Conference head baseball coach with 820 career victories, which ranks 13th among active Power 4 head coaches, and he is the only active NCAA Division I coach to have served as head coach at four Power 4 programs — with stops at Boston College (1999-2006), Virginia Tech (2007-2013) and Oklahoma (2014-2017). He has posted 25 winning seasons in 28 years as a head coach, including all seven seasons at K-State, taking the Wildcats to the 2024 NCAA Super Regional and 2025 NCAA Regional.
Large matte silver lettering posted along an overhang in his office reveals that the 57-year-old native of Brockton, Massachusetts, isn't letting down anytime soon.
"THE OMAHA STANDARD," the silver letters beam.
K-State junior right-hander James Guyette lets it be known that the Wildcats mean business.
"Looking back on the two years we've gone to regionals, I know what it takes to get to the postseason, and this team has what it takes," Guyette says. "We have the talent, depth and a very talented hitting lineup. We have what it takes. It's just a matter of doing it when it matters."
After finishing with a 35-26 record, including a 15-15 mark in the Big 12, and reaching the 2024 NCAA Super Regional, K-State faced challenges last season. Virtually the entire starting lineup was gone, including three MLB Draftees that included the best closer in college baseball. And yet, Hughes and his coaching staff pieced together a hard-nosed squad that fought, and fought hard, and the Wildcats were battle tested by playing one of the toughest schedules in America, and they finished 32-24 overall, including 17-13 in the Big 12, posting their most conference victories in history, and got back into the NCAA Regionals for a second straight season.
And yet, silence emits from across the college baseball nation heading into the 2026 season.
Could it be the sound of disrespect?
"Do we have a chip on our shoulder? Absolutely," Hughes says. "That's who we are. We're Kansas State baseball. We're a bubble team before the season starts and somehow, they're going to put us on that bubble no matter our body of work. That's just who we are right now. It motivates us.
"Until you start stacking years and years of knocking on the door at Omaha, then you'll get the respect of a program that has great tradition. We're fighting a lot of these things right now, but we do every year and we can only control what we can control and that's being really good on Friday against Iowa, playing great on the road, and continuing to establish a home-field presence, and to be consistent from February until the beginning of June, and then we won't be considered that seventh-place team that has no prospects. Believe me, we have no problem with that right now because we know who we are."
Coming off its third straight 30-win season, K-State returns 21 players, including 17 letterwinners, from last season. The list of key returners begins with sophomore infielder/outfielder AJ Evasco, who earned D1Baseball Freshman All-America honors after turning in a record-breaking debut season by setting K-State freshman records with 11 home runs and 52 RBI. Senior infielder Shintaro Inoue, junior infielder Dee Kennedy, senior catcher Bear Madliak, senior outfielder Kyan Lodice and sophomore pitcher/outfielder Donte Lewis figure heavily into the mix as well.
"Year one was a lot," Lewis says. "I just learned to really hone in on focusing on the skills that'll help me on both sides. It's going to be a heavy load this year but I'm excited."
The Wildcats also brought in 12 transfers. That includes senior outfielder Robby Bolin (Nebraska), redshirt senior right-hander Cohen Feser (TCU), senior right-hander Matt Flores (UC Riverside), senior left-hander Robert Fortenberry (Mississippi State), senior infielder Grant Gallagher (Tennessee State), junior infielder/right-hander Austin Haley (Murray State), graduate catcher Shea McGahan (Southeast Missouri) and redshirt senior infielder Carlos Vasquez (Western Kentucky).
"You have to build into the culture that's been built," says Madliak, who transferred from Jacksonville State last season. "I knew this was a great place. You might think why a boy from Georgia would come to K-State, but I've been to two different schools and have had three different coaches, and this is by far the best place I've been to. You buy in and listen to your coaches, and they're going to have your back. I love these guys. Just buy into the culture."
Perhaps no current K-State player understands the baseball culture better than Lodice, a native of Omaha, Nebraska, who embarks upon his fifth year with the program.
"Coming in here my freshman year, Kansas State was never a baseball school," Lodice says. "We've flipped this program around entirely. It's a daily thing we talk about, having a chip on the shoulder, whether it's in practice or on the field, and we all share the same belief. Having a chip on our shoulder pushes us farther and farther.
"Talent wise, we have it, and we have the depth, and without those things, having a chip on our shoulder would mean nothing to us. It's going to help us succeed and get to higher places."
Oftentimes last year, K-State sent shots higher and higher over the scoreboard. K-State hit a school-record 97 home runs in 2025.
Could the Wildcats' power hitting return in 2026?
"I think so," Hughes says. "The key is to get better every year. We're a lot deeper than we were offensively last year. I'm used to playing nine or 10 guys, and that number has jumped to 12 or 13 guys in the mix, which gives you really good matchups. That power component will be there again. We'll see a lot of pitches, control the strike zone, get on base, put pressure on people, and that power component is right there."
The pitching staff is one of the deepest under Hughes, who is undecided exactly who will take the mound the first week of the season.
The list of potential options starts with Guyette, who was second on the team with a 4.70 ERA in 51.2 innings pitched and had 51 strikeouts while ranking 10th in the Big 12 in saves en route to earning All-Big 12 Honorable Mention accolades. Senior left-hander Lincoln Sheffield had a team-leading 15 starts and was second on the team with 70 strikeouts last season. Feser held opponents scoreless in 10 of 18 appearances last season at TCU. Flores began his career at Hawaii and spent the last two seasons at UC Riverside where he had a 3.66 ERA (16 ER, 39.1 IP) last season. Redshirt junior right-hander Tanner Duke, who transferred from Baylor after the 2024 campaign, posted 35 strikeouts in 38 innings pitched while issuing just 15 walks last season. Redshirt junior sidewinder lefty Cole Wisenbaker is back after missing last season due to injury but made 22 relief appearances in 2024. Redshirt senior right-hander Tazwell Butler recorded 24 strikeouts in 26 2/3 innings pitched with just nine walks last season. Eich comes to K-State from Division II Barry University, where he boasted a 4.78 ERA in 15 weekend starts while surrendering 40 earned runs over 75.1 innings.
"We have a super-competitive pitching staff right now with a lot of returning veteran guys who've been in the heat of the battle," Hughes said. "It hasn't really sorted itself out, but it will. It could vary from weekend to weekend with matchups and who we're playing and facilities we're playing in. We have the luxury of seven or eight guys who are pretty talented and battle tested who could make up our rotation at some point.
"Right out of the gate, at Louisiana, somebody important on our pitching staff is going to be pitching those games, and it's going to be on a Tuesday and Wednesday. Are we going to have a clear-cut Friday, Saturday, Sunday rotation like last year? Today, I'd say it's going to vary, and that speaks volumes to the depth of our pitching staff."
Redshirt senior right-hander Carson Liggett, who transferred from Louisville, returns after missing last season at K-State due to Tommy John surgery and could be a starter or perhaps a closer — but Hughes and pitching coach Rudy Darrow are being careful.
"Carson Liggett is as advanced in his rehab post-Tommy John as any pitcher I've ever coached," Hughes says. "At seven months, he was full go. It's amazing. I've never seen a kid at seven months with a stronger arm and touch and feel for four pitches. That's where Carson was at seven months. He's at nine months right now. We're going to be careful with him. Even though he's done great things in his rehab, we'll still error on the safe side with Carson, but he'll certainly pitch weekend one for us at some point."
The journey through the 2026 campaign fires up when K-State faces Iowa on Opening Day on February 13 at the MLB Desert Invitational in Scottsdale, Arizona. The Wildcats' four-day event will also feature games against UConn, Penn State and Air Force. The Wildcats' 55-game schedule includes nine opponents that advanced to the 2025 NCAA Regional, while Auburn and West Virginia went to the Super Regional, and Arizona went to the College World Series. In total, K-State will face nine teams — 22 games — that finished with an RPI of 50 or lower in 2025, while two were ranked in the final D1Baseball Top 25 poll. K-State will play midweek non-conference games at Baylor (March 17) and at BYU (March 31) to continue building its RPI as well.
K-State played one of the nation's toughest schedules last season in order to appease the RPI metric and satisfy members of the NCAA Tournament selection committee.
This season? K-State plays its first nine games on the road. It starts in the MLB Desert Invitational, then against Auburn, Nebraska and Michigan in the Amegy Bank College Baseball Series, and finally back-to-back games at Louisiana. K-State's home opener against Columbia is on February 27 at Tointon Family Stadium.
"I'm constantly trying to build our RPI, and you do that through non-conference opportunities," Hughes says. "In this part of the country, it's well documented we don't have great non-conference RPI opportunities in Kansas, so you have to be creative with the schedule. In the past, we've gotten on a plane and gone to Tennessee or Clemson midweek to ramp up our RPI to improve our resume so we can get on the bubble or off the bubble, however you approach it. At the end of the day, the RPI is a metric that's way too important in the process, but until that changes, I'll continue to schedule the way we're doing. The way we do that is we jack up our non-conference RPI.
"We play a tough schedule. It's always a difficult situation because you want more home games, but at the end of the day, we're hired to get into the national tournament so we can get hot and go to Omaha. Getting away from home a little bit with the RPI is the most efficient way for us to put ourselves into position to play in the national tournament at the end of the year. That's what motivates that scheduling."
K-State will look to begin its winning ways on Opening Day against Iowa next Friday in Goodyear Ballpark in Goodyear, Arizona. The 2026 NCAA Division I Baseball Tournament Selection Show to announce the 64-team regional field and host sites is scheduled for May 25.
In between will be a whole lot of intrigue — again.
"Something different this year than any other year is the amount of experience and older players we have on this team," Lodice says. "That's going to play an even bigger role this year with the amount of experience we have coming from other schools and the older guys who've played a lot of baseball. That's going to hone in on even more June baseball for us.
"Going to a Super Regional and a Regional, this team is well capable — plus Omaha."
Players Mentioned
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LHP
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INF
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RHP
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INF/RHP
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UTL
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